Since,
for some reason, my photos (which almost came out well, too) won't
render when I preview this post I'll just list what I built for sake
of clarity: five Skitarii Rangers with galvanic rifles, one with
galvanic rifle and omnispex, one with plasma caliver, one with arc
rifle, one with transuranic arquebus and an Alpha with arc pistol and
taser goad.
Ease
of Build
Okay,
bit of an ancillary rant here but I need this for context: I bloody
hate the bolters in the new Space Marine kits, they are a dryfitting
nightmare to build. Who even though that making the three-part
assemble less stable and harder to dryfit was a good idea?
Anyway,
this kit does not do that with its guns, not on any of the builds:
each gun assembly has two components: a large piece made of the gun
and the whole right arm of the model and the second is the left arm
that completes the assembly. Most of the guns are mono-pose but
that's good as the reason for this is a groove under the armpit of
the right arm that slots over one of the pipes on the side of the
torso. It means you'll always get the right pose for the other arm to
slot into without having to dry fit and practice. There were a couple
of galvanic rifles without this feature and its absent on the plasma
culiver as well but those guns are more forgivingly posed so that
wasn't a problem.
The
locating groove is part of
the transuranic arquebus which I am immensely grateful for as I was
worried the stand (which is a separate piece) would end up crooked if
I didn't pose the arquebus perfectly straight.
Ease
of Conversion
Since
my first though was Renegades & Heretics conversions on these
puppies I did look closely at how these could be converted. To be
honest, if you want to swap the torsos out for something else,
obvious option being the R&H conversion kits from Forge World,
you're wasting some of the most characterful parts in the kit and I'm
not sure the arms will fit them.
Head
and weapon swaps shouldn't be too hard and I wonder if some sort of
feral servitor or techno-barbarian close combat model could be made
like that.
Take
this as you will: I did some dryfitting and the spare head (the
Vanguard variant) fit near perfectly on a Tempestus Scion and with a
little cutting down of the ball join they don't look too out of scale
with a Cadian Guardsman.
Spare
Parts
I
have ten Vanguard heads and a few champion head variants plus various
champion weapons options which will come in useful if there are HQ
options in the Codex (or, touch wood, the full-size Adeptus
Mechanicus Codex I anticipate will come after given the range
branding). There are also the spare galvanic rifle and radium carbine
assemblies though I'm not sure how useful they'll be unless they turn
out to fit Guardsmen. There's also one radium carbine and one
galvanic rifle just on their own, no hands attached, which might be
useful for diorama or vehicle decoration.
